


Middle ground

by mkhhhx



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, College, Complicated Relationships, Divorce, Living Together, M/M, Open but happy ending, Sleeping with other people, Slice of Life, Sprinkles of angst, mention of weed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:33:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26548315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mkhhhx/pseuds/mkhhhx
Summary: At eleven, marriage isn't something that makes much sense to Taeil.Even if it did, he doesn't know what being bound to Johnny for life would mean.
Relationships: Moon Taeil/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 14
Kudos: 54
Collections: Moon City Fic Fest Round 1





	Middle ground

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone!   
> This is for prompt #103 of the [Moon City Fest](https://twitter.com/mooncityfest) .  
> I don't know if the prompter will see this, but I hope I did it justice despite the liberties!

“So that’s it?” Johnny turns to him, the lawyer’s door shutting behind them.

“That’s it.” Taeil smiles looking up, Johnny’s lips turned to the tiniest frown, his calm face.

They’ve driven there in two different cars and they’re gonna head to two different apartments to spend that night and every night afterwards. Taeil knows he’s gonna miss Johnny’s presence, not in the way he would be expected to, but in the way people miss their close friends, their long-term good roommates, their family. They both knew the divorce was inevitably coming, were even waiting for it, but now Taeil is left with a bittersweet kind of satisfaction and a small, Johnny shaped, hole in his heart.

“Alright then” Johnny takes the first step to the parking lot across the road and Taeil follows, “I’ll call you”.

“Alright” Taeil unlocks his car and watches Johnny opening the door of his own. The passenger’s seat is still pushed too close to the front, the way Taeil was most comfortable.

\--

Taeil vaguely remembers the very first time he and Johnny met. They were roughly the same height back then, both a little shy, playing at the Suh family’s living room while their parents drunk wine and talked about their grown-up things.

“Did you have fun with Johnny, dear?” His mother had asked later, tucking him in bed and Taeil had nodded because Johnny was fun and shared his toy cars without complains. Taeil didn’t ask for much more than that from a new friend, he was only five after all. “Would you like to see him again? We can invite him and his parents here for dinner next week.”

And of course Taeil didn’t know any better than to agree, he wasn’t about to turn down a playdate.

The Suhs become a fixed part of their lives. Dinners, play dates, study dates when he and Johnny are older, their families taking them for long walks and to museums and to the theater together.

Taeil doesn’t know what any of that means, he doesn’t even think it might mean anything more than his and Johnny’s parents being close friends. Not until one afternoon he’s at the playground with Johnny, knees scraped and his toys muddy from playing around on damp ground, his and Johnny’s fathers sitting on a bench a few meters away, barely paying them any attention.

“Hyung,” Johnny gets close to him and flops on the ground, “I heard mum and dad talking the other day.”

“Yeah?” Taeil places his toys down because Adult Talk is always fun.

“They said they’ll have to talk to us soon,” Johnny plays with the hem of his sleeve, like he’s uncomfortable, “they said we’re gonna get married when we grow up.”

Taeil’s first instinct is to laugh, although Johnny looks dead serious. He doesn’t know much about marriage. He knows his parents are married, he sees weddings in movies sometimes, but he just knows it’s a grown up thing.

“They really said that?” He asks at last and Johnny just nods and shrugs.

Taeil offers him an action figure and life moves on.

Taeil almost forgets about that little weird thing Johnny told him about getting married. He blissfully forgets for a good couple months until his eleventh birthday, when his dad sits him on their big dinner table and tells him they have something important to discuss.

“The Suh family has been very kind to us,” he tells Taeil and he instantly remembers Johnny’s perplexed face in the playground, “they are great benefactors to our family’s business. That business is your future, you know that Taeil, don’t you?”

Taeil doesn’t, but he mutters a hesitant “yes”, anyway. He has seen his dad’s company, the enormous skyscraper, his father’s office right at the top, a playground for him.

“It will be very good to strengthen our bond with the Suh family, Taeil,” his mother is sitting at the other side, smiling at them and Taeil knows that nothing bad can happen, not when he has his mother’s reassurance.

Taeil doesn’t really know what marrying Johnny means, because Johnny is his friend and they share their toys and catch frogs by the river at the Suh estate and pedal down the hills on their bikes. He doesn’t know, but he trusts his parents and he trusts the Suhs too and for eleven year old him marriage doesn’t mean much, anyway, so he goes along with it.

Puberty is a weird period for everyone. It becomes even weirder when your family reminds you that you are meant to marry a specific person and that specific person should be your one and only, your endgame. Sometimes it’s alright and other times Taeil feels trapped. Because he and Johnny naturally start drifting apart. They have different taste in music, different hobbies, different friend circles despite their parents making sure they hang with each other more often than not.

Sometimes they find common middle grounds. Johnny attends the choir events to see Taeil singing and Taeil goes to Johnny’s skateboard competitions. They have their first fights over petty tiny things here and there, but they are teens and don’t know any better. Taeil gets his first crush and his first heartbreak because he knows everyone that’s not Johnny is off limits. He starts wondering if he will start loving Johnny in a different way as time goes by, as his mother says he will.

“What if we just…run away.” Johnny is tuning his guitar next to him, close to midnight, in the middle of an empty basketball court. They’re sitting at the bleachers and looking at the starless sky and pretending that everything is alright and under control.

“You know we can’t,” Taeil says, although he likes the idea of a new life, one without having to attend business meetings, one where he and Johnny are just childhood friends.

“I don’t know if I can do the things they expect from us,” Johnny leaves his guitar on the ground, “marrying you might be the least terrifying out of everything, but it’s stil…it’s weird, hyung.”

Taeil turns around to look at Johnny, actually look at him. He’s taller now, taller than Taeil and soon he’ll be taller than their fathers too. He’s all long limbs and a small, pretty face. He wears tees with rock bands on and goes places on his skateboard. He smokes weed sometimes because he’s cool like that.

“We’ll figure it out along the way, I guess.” He takes Johnny’s hand in his own and intertwines their fingers together. He’s supposed to be older and wiser, but even then, at fifteen, he knows their marriage is a train wreck waiting to happen.

Johnny is extroverted and loud, popular and full of life and anger and passion for all kinds of things. Taeil is more introverted, focused on his studies, mellow and dedicated to his own goals, his vocal training and his math competitions and getting better at his favorite videogames. They clash, they push and pull at each other like it’s a game although nobody can win. When Taeil is seventeen Johnny is his first kiss. It’s soft, kind of weird, kind of nice, even nicer when Johnny’s tongue parts his lips and fingers come up to Taeil’s cheek to tilt his head. He doesn’t mind he’s not Johnny’s first.

As expected, a lot of firsts follow. It’s awkward, but they somehow manage to make it work and by the time they are shipped together to the country’s most prestigious university they have mapped each other’s bodies in and out.

Sometimes Taeil thinks there is something there, a spark, a chance he’s falling in love. In the way Johnny calls his name late at night when he falls asleep on the couch of their shared penthouse, in the way they moan into each other’s mouths, in the way they sit together to eat breakfast every morning.

“I love you,” Johnny tells him one day, walking back from their classes, “but I don’t know if I will ever be in love with you.”

“That’s alright,” Taeil smiles up at him, “that’s okay.” They both know it’s not, but as always there are not many options, none other than to keep going in the same way.

The four years they spend at university away from their parents are a blessing. They get a good breath of freedom and news, even the most scandalizing ones barely ever leave the safe bubble of the campus. They go out, get drunk, fuck each other, fuck other people and get drunk some more. They always return to each other, more out of habit and loyalty to their self-fulfilling prophecy than anything else.

“We really are getting married, huh?” Johnny laughs in the crook of his neck. They are cuddling on the couch, watching some documentary. Taeil’s mother messaged him to inform them the wedding preparations have started and there are only three weeks of their last semester left.

“I think I’ll make a perfect husband,” Taeil giggles, because it seems absurd, because all those years this marriage was something so far away, something they could joke about, but it’s actually happening. He turns around to kiss Johnny on the lips, basking in his body warmth, “we’ll make it work, somehow.”

As expected, they do get married straight out of university. It’s not like the weddings on the television, it’s not even close to the celebration Taeil imagined they would have. It’s just twenty minutes spent in the mayor’s office, a couple signatures and their families and few invited friends congratulating them and just like that, Taeil is a husband and also has a husband.

It’s not difficult to live with Johnny, it’s familiar and comforting most days, expect from the times when they get angry and done with each other and Johnny leaves for a drive and a smoke in the middle of the night and Taeil shuts himself in his study. Their life shifts from their college days, becomes boring and mundane and repetitive. They have to work at their parents’ companies, one company now, fused a little bit after their marriage and they have to attend meetings and appear pleasant and proper and all the good things the Suhs and the Moons represent.

“You look hot in that,” Taeil wiggles his eyebrows, Johnny tying his tie. They’re attending some official event together, full formal, full boring.

“Do I?” Johnny looks at his reflection on the mirror of their bedroom, turning around to see how the blazer falls on his shoulders and back.

“Maybe we should skip,” Taeil steps close, playing with Johnny’s tie, the bed inviting and right behind them.

“And who’s gonna tell dad we ditched his fancy ball to stain our tailored suits?”

“Oh, well,” Taeil laughs, “maybe when we get back, then.”

For some years it’s as good as it goes. When Taeil is twenty-five Johnny surprises him with a two-week holiday at Italy and France. When Johnny is twenty-six they make a bucket list and visit every single museum in the country. When Taeil is twenty-eight their house of cards collapses.

They knew it wouldn’t last, of course they knew because they were stuck in a weird space, somewhere between best friends and roommates and fuckbuddies, but they were never in love, never in a way that could really bind them to each other for life.

Taeil spends more time in the office, buried between papers until long after the sun is down. Sometimes he flirts with his secretary. Sometimes he takes the elevator to the upper floor and fights with his father. The days pass slowly.

Johnny, on the other hand, was never meant for the company. He tolerated, was decent at his job, until he snapped. His own father gave him some months off but Taeil knew, Johnny wouldn’t come back, was even happy for him. He knew Johnny played music at bars some nights under a different name, he knew Johnny had a lover, he knew he has been saving up since forever.

“Maybe we should put a stop to this.” It’s one of the rare times they eat breakfast together anymore and still Taeil holds Johnny’s hands in his own on the table, like he always did. “We can’t do it anymore, Johnny.”

Johnny looks small in the harsh morning light, defeated. “You know, there was a time I believed we would make it,” he licks his lips, staring at the table, “I thought I could be happy with you, I will never find someone as good as you, Taeil, I hope you know that.”

“Of course you will,” Taeil laughs. He takes Johnny’s hand and kisses it, “maybe not better, but hopefully just right.”

They stretch their time thin, months turning to a couple more years because even at this age it’s difficult to break the news to their parents. To their parents that definitely know, but won’t meddle as long as nothing surfaces to the public and their company stocks keep going up.

Johnny is seeing someone. Taeil starts seeing his secretary. They live in the same house and barely see each other. Then Johnny buys another house and they don’t see each other at all.

When they decide to rip the band aid and break the news to their parents it doesn’t come as a surprise. There’s no shouting, no anger, just defeat, small “that’s a pity” and “are you sure?”s but the company is doing well and their marital status won’t make any difference anymore.

Taeil finds the lawyer. He books them the dates and everything goes smoothly. He keeps the house that Johnny never liked that much anyway. They divide their assets, talk about the money in their shared bank account. Johnny finds him in the court room’s toilet’s before their turn and tells him he’ll miss his breakfast and Taeil laughs, promising they’re not past their last shared meal yet.

\--

So here they are now, leaving the lawyer’s office with the last of their signed papers, Johnny going home to his boyfriend, Taeil going home to clear his mind with some company paperwork and a drink. They are as far from strangers as they are from husbands now and maybe sometime they can meet in the middle again, as friends.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> You can find me [here](https://twitter.com/kuns_dimples)!


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